   We have all felt time stand still. We have all been in the presence of power, the knowledge of the old ones, the majestic peace of a mountain stream or an aspen grove or red buttes rising into blue sky. We have all felt the light of dusk permeatethe earth and cause time to pause in its flow. 
   I felt this when first touched by the spirit of Ultima, the old curanderar who appears in my first novel, Bless Me, Ultima. This is how the young Antonio describes what he feels: 
   When she came the beauty of the llano unfolded before my eyes, and the gurgling waters of the river sang to the hum of the turning earth. The magical time of childhood stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood. She took my hand, and the silent, magic powers she possessed made beauty from the raw, sun-baked llano, the green river valley, and the blue bowl which was the white sun's home. My bare feet felt the throbbing earth, and my body trem- bled with excitement. Time stood still ... 
   At other times, in other places, when I have been privileged to be with the old ones, to learn, I have felt this inner reserve of strength upon which they draw. I have been held motionless and speechless by the power of curanderas. I have felt the same power when I hunted with Cruz, high on the Taos Ita: cs] mountain, where it was more than the incredible beauty of the mountain bathed' in morning light, more than the shining of the quivering aspen, but a connec- tion with life, as if a shining strand of light connected the particular and the cosmic. That feeling is an epiphany of time, a standing still of time. 
   But not all of our old ones are curanderos or hunters on the mountain. My grandfather was a plain man, a farmer from Puerto de Luna 10 on the Pecos River. He was probably a descendent of .those people who spilled over the mountain from Taos, following the Pecos River in search of farmland. There in that river valley he settled and raised a large family. 
   Bearded and walrus-mustached, he stood five feet tall, but to me as a child he was a giant. I remember him most for his silence. In the summers my parents sent me to live with him on his farm, for I was to learn the ways of a farmer. My uncles also lived in that valley, the valley called Puerto de Luna, there where only the flow of ' the river and the whispering of the wind marked time. For me it was 
a magical place.

